Keith Kellogg’s return to Ukraine diplomacy shows Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy

The retired general’s path from discarded envoy to Ukraine tsar highlights the US president’s volatile approach to international relations, writes Mark Almond. But what does it mean for America’s relationship with Kyiv?

Donald Trump’s whirligig presidency continues with sudden reversals of foreign policy and key diplomatic appointments.

Retired lieutenant general, Keith Kellogg, had appeared “out” of Ukrainian affairs only a few days ago.

Eight weeks ago, the government in Kyiv and many friends of Ukraine abroad had celebrated his appointment as the president’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia as a victory for a hardline stance against Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Kellogg’s own public statements on Russian war guilt, and his daughter Meaghan Mobbs’s very public role as a fundraiser for Ukraine led people to assume that fears that Trump would “sell out” the country were misplaced.

But Kellogg was briefed against by the White House media team immediately after the Trump-Zelensky bust-up in the Oval Office. He had failed to join in the pile-on against the Ukrainian president. Kellogg was removed from his post. With the Kremlin against him too, it looked like the 81-year-old had reached the end of his long road of service to the US.

But the 78-year-old president is no ageist. True, Trump does not value decades of experience, but you’re never too old to crawl back into favour with him.

Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had set the bar high for swallowing past criticisms of the comeback king. Kellogg chose to respond to his apparent loss of presidential favour after the Oval Office fiasco by punching down on the Ukrainians.

The obdurate Zelensky team had baulked at Trump’s original “peace plan”. Now Kellogg applauded the administration’s suspension of various forms of aid, most importantly intelligence sharing. He used a striking metaphor for how Washington would handle Kyiv’s refusal to fall in line. US policy was “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”.

In many ways, Trump’s harsh treatment of allies is a perverse way of showing the US’s rivals, like Russia or China, that he means business and shouldn’t be crossed.

Kellogg had made the rare transition from now “un-person” vice-president Mike Pence’s team to Team Trump.

Kellogg supported the president during his first impeachment when he said he saw nothing wrong in Trump’s telephone call to Zelensky demanding evidence of Hunter Biden’s corruption in Ukraine in return for continued US backing. That gave him credit with a president who values those who confuse loyalty to him with allegiance to the constitution – or at least don’t see how any contradiction could arise.

Trump 1.0 boasted about “my generals” who he appointed to key posts. John Kelly, his chief of staff in the White House, James Mattis at the Pentagon and National Security adviser, HR McMaster, fell from grace and spilled the beans on his way of governing. Trump dismissed the Iraq War and Afghan veterans as “losers” and “overrated”.

Kellogg has shown tactical dexterity in bludgeoning his way back as Trump’s new Ukraine tsar.

He has cultivated Trump’s key courtiers and not overrated the value of his war record like the “forgotten” generals of the internal power struggles, 2017-21. On Sunday, he retweeted approvingly Elon Musk’s intervention in the theory of war: “You can’t truly call yourself ‘peaceful’ unless you’re capable of great violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.”

As a man who had seen brutal attritional warfare at first hand in Vietnam, there is no reason to doubt Kellogg’s desire to save a generation of Ukrainians – and Russians, for that matter – from the daily “body count” for small territorial gains. But his toughness makes him unsentimental in dealing with Ukrainian leaders.

How long Kellogg can stay in his job depends less on the fluctuating front lines than his sensitivity to the president’s mood swings.